Music

At the beginning of 2011, Abbey Road Studios launched a worldwide search for original, unsigned and undiscovered composers, in celebration of their 80th anniversary.

The truly unique prize for winners was the opportunity to record their original work in Abbey Road Studios’ famous Studio One with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by renowned composer Eric Whitacre. This is the same location and same world-class orchestra that recorded ‘Land of Hope And Glory’, conducted by Sir Edward Elgar 80 years ago, not to mention recordings for the Star Wars and Harry Potter films and countless classical albums.

After 918 entries, Abbey Road Studios’ senior engineer Jonathan Allen along with the judges - Eric Whitacre, Harry Christophers, George Fenton and Rob Mathes had the mammoth task of whittling them down to a final few. Eventually, 8 winners emerged who’d submitted 8 very different pieces of music that all the judges deemed to be exciting and new anthems.

“It was an extremely overwhelming and humbling experience. I feel very lucky to have been part of such a wonderful project. Abbey Road Studios is the spiritual home of the British recording industry and I can't believe they let us past reception.”Oliver Chapman, competition winner

The idea behind the anthem competition was to celebrate 80 years of Abbey Road Studios with new music and to open its doors, giving up-and-coming composers the opportunity to experience top-end facilities and creative collaboration usually only available to professionals in the higher echelons of the music industry. It was also Abbey Road Studios’ way of saying thank you for the support of the wider, music-loving public with an inclusive competition, open to anyone with an interest in music composition.

We are very proud to be able to exclusively offer the 24-bit FLAC versions of these winning entries as well as 16-bit Apple lossless.

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